Labyrinth (39 page)

It was nearly two o’clock by the time Alice drove into Salleles d’Aude. She parked under the lime trees and parasol pines that bordered the Canal du Midi, just down from the lock gates, then wound her way through pretty streets until she arrived at the rue des Burgues.

Grace’s tiny three-storey house was on the corner and gave straight on to the street. A fairytale summer rose, its crimson blooms hanging heavily from the bough, framed the old-fashioned wooden door and large brown shutters. The lock was stiff and Alice had to jiggle the heavy brass key wind until she managed to make it turn. She gave a good hard shove a sharp kick. The door creaked open, scraping over the black and white tiles and free newspapers blocking the door from the inside.

It opened straight into a single downstairs room, the kitchen area to left and a larger living area to her right. The house felt cold and damp, the maudlin smell of a home long abandoned. The chill air crept around her bare legs like a cat. Alice tried the light switch, but the electricity had been turned off. Picking up the junk mail and circulars and it out of the way on the table, she leaned over the sink, opened the window and struggled with the ornate latch to pin back the shutters.

A jug kettle and an old-fashioned cooker with a grill-pan at eye-level were the closest her aunt had come to mod cons. The draining board was empty and the sink was clean, although a couple of sponges, rigid like dry old bones, were wedged behind the taps.

Alice crossed the room and opened the large window in the living and pushed back the heavy brown shutters. Straight away, the sun flooded in, transforming the room. Leaning out, she breathed in the scent of the roses, relaxing under the touch of the hot summer air for a moment, letting it chase her feelings of discomfort away. She felt like an intruder, poking around someone else’s life without permission.

Two high-backed wooden armchairs were set at an angle to the fireplace. The chimney surround was grey stone, with a few china ornaments arranged on the mantle, coated with dust. The blackened remains of a fire long cold sat in the grate. Alice pushed with her toe and it collapsed, sending a cloud of fine grey ash billowing over everything.

Hanging on the wall beside the fireplace was an oil painting of a stone house with a sloping, red-tiled roof, set among fields of sunflowers and vines. Alice peered at the signature scrawled across the bottom right-hand corner: BAILLARD.

A dining table, four chairs and a sideboard occupied the back of the room. Alice opened the doors and found a set of coasters and mats, decorated with pictures of French cathedrals, a pile of linen napkins and a canteen of silver cutlery, which rattled loudly as she pushed the drawer shut. The best china - serving dishes, cream jug, dessert bowls, and a gravy boat - was tucked away on the shelves underneath.

In the far corner of the room were two doors. The first turned out to be the utility cupboard - ironing board, dustpan and brush, broom, a couple of coat hooks and lots of carrier bags from Giant tucked one inside the other. The second door concealed the stairs.

Her sandals clipped on the wooden treads as she made her way up into the dark. There was a pink-tiled, functional bathroom straight ahead, with a lump of dried-out soap on the basin and a bone-dry flannel hanging on a hook next to the no-nonsense mirror.

Grace’s bedroom was to the left. The single bed was made up with sheets and blankets and a heavy feather eiderdown. On a mahogany bedside cupboard was an ancient bottle of Milk of Magnesia with a white crust around its top, and a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine by Alison Weir.

The sight of an old-fashioned bookmark marking the page tugged at her heartstrings. She could imagine Grace turning off the light to go to sleep, slipping the bookmark in to save the page. But time had run out. She had died before she had the chance to finish. Feeling uncharacteristically sentimental, Alice put the book to one side. She’d take it with her and give it a home.

In the drawer of the bedside table was a lavender bag, the pink ribbon at its neck bleached with age, as well as a prescription and a box of new handkerchiefs. Several other books filled the ledge beneath. Alice crouched down and tilted her head to one side to read the spines, always unable to resist snooping at what other people had on their shelves. It was much as she would expect. A Mary Stewart or two, a couple of Joanna Trollopes, an old book club edition of
Peyton Place
and a slim volume about the Cathars. The author’s name was printed in capital letters: A S BAILLARD. Alice raised her eyebrows. The same person who had painted the picture downstairs? The name of the translator was printed underneath: J GIRAUD.

Alice turned the book over and read the blurb. A translation of the Gospel of St John into Occitan, as well as several books about Ancient Egypt and an award-winning biography of Jean-Francois Champollion, the nineteenth-century scholar who’d deciphered the secret of hieroglyphs.

Something sparked in Alice’s brain. The library in Toulouse with the maps and charts and illustrations blinking on the screen in front of her eyes.
Egypt again
.

The front cover illustration of Baillard’s book was a photograph of a ruined castle, shrouded in purple mist, perched perilously at the top of a sheer rock. Alice recognised it from postcards and guidebooks as Montsegur.

She opened it. The pages fell open of their own accord about two thirds of the way through, where a piece of card had been tucked into the spine. Alice started to read:

The fortified citadel of Montsegur is set high on the mountain top, nearlyan hour’s climb up from the village of Montsegur. Often hidden by clouds, three sides of the castle are hewn out of the mountainside itself. It is an extraordinary natural fortress. What remains dates not from the thirteenth century but from more recent wars of occupation. Yet the spirit of place reminds the visitor always of its tragic past.

The legends associated with Montsegur — the safe mountain — are legion. Some believe it is a solar temple, others that it was the inspiration for Wagner’s Munsalvaesche, his Safe or Grail Mountain in his greatest work
, Parsival
. Others believed it to have been the final resting place of the Graal. It has been suggested that the Cathars were the guardians of the Cup of Christ, together with many other treasures from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, or perhaps Visigoth gold and other riches from unspecified sources.

Whilst it is believed the fabled Cathar treasure was smuggled away from the besieged citadel in January 1244, shortly before the final defeat, that treasure has never been found. Rumurs that this most precious of objects was lost are inaccurate.
*

Alice followed the note to the asterisk to the bottom of the page. Rather than a footnote there was a quotation from the Gospel of St John, chapter eight, verse thirty-two:
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.“

She raised her eyebrows. It didn’t seem to have much relevance to the text at all.

Alice put Baillard’s book with the others ready to take with her, then crossed to the back bedroom.

There was an old-fashioned Singer sewing machine, incongruously English in the thick-walled French house. Her mother had had one exactly like it and sat sewing for hours on end, filling the house with the comforting thud and rat-a-tat of the treadle.

Alice smoothed her hand over the dust-covered surface. It looked to be in good working order. She opened each of the compartments in turn, finding cotton reels, needles, pins, fragments of lace and ribbon, a card of old-fashioned silver poppers and a box of assorted buttons.

She turned to the oak desk by the window which overlooked a small, enclosed courtyard at the back of the house. The first two drawers were lined with wallpaper but completely empty. The third, surprisingly, was locked, although the key had been left in the keyhole.

With a combination of force and jiggling of the tiny silver key, Alice managed to pull it open. Sitting at the bottom of the drawer was a shoebox. She lifted it out and placed it on top of the desk.

Everything was very neat inside. There was a bundle of photographs tied up with string. A single letter lay loose on the top. It was addressed to Mme Tanner in black, spidery script. Postmarked
Carcassonne, 16 Mars 2005
, the word
PRIORITAIRE
was stamped across it in red. There was no return address on the back, simply a name printed in the same italic script:
Expediteur Audric S Baillard
.

Alice slid her fingers inside and pulled out a single sheet of thick, cream paper. There was no date or address or explanation, just a poem written in the same hand.

Bona nueit, bona nueit…

Braves amücs, pica mieja-nueit

Cal finir velhada

Ejos la flassada

A faint memory rippled across the surface of her mind like a song long forgotten. The words scratched at the top of the steps in the cave. It was the same language, she’d swear, her unconscious mind making the connection her conscious mind could not.

Alice leaned back against the bed. March the sixteenth, a couple of days before her great-aunt’s death. Had she put it in the box herself or had that been left to someone else? Baillard himself?

Putting the poem to one side, Alice undid the string.

There were ten photographs in all, all black and white and arranged in chronological order. The month, place and date were printed on the back in capital letters in pencil. The first photograph was a studio portrait of a serious little boy in school uniform, his hair combed flat with a sharp parting. Alice turned it over.
FREDERICK WILLIAM TANNER, SEPTEMBER 1937
was written on the back in blue ink. Different handwriting.

Her heart did a somersault. The same photo of her dad had stood on the mantelpiece at home, next to her parents’ wedding photograph and a portrait of Alice herself at the age of six in a smocked party dress with puffed sleeves. She traced the lines of his face with her fingers. It proved, if nothing else, that Grace was aware of her little brother’s existence, even if they’d never met.

Alice put it to one side and moved to the next, working her way methodically through the pile. The earliest photograph she found of her aunt herself was surprisingly recent, taken at a summer fete in July 1958.

There was a distinct family resemblance. Like Alice, Grace was petite with delicate, almost elfin, features, although her hair was straight and grey and cut uncompromisingly short. Grace was looking straight at the camera, her handbag held firmly in front of her like a barrier.

The final photograph was another shot of Grace, a few years older, standing with an elderly man. Alice creased her brow. He reminded her of someone. She turned the photo slightly, to change the way the light fell on the image.

They were standing in front of an old stone wall. There was something about the pose, as if they didn’t know each other well. From their clothes, it was late spring or summer. Grace was wearing a short-sleeved summer dress, gathered at the waist. Her companion was tall and very in a pale summer suit. His face was obscured by the shadow of his panama hat but his speckled, creased hands gave his age away.

On the wall behind them a French street sign was partially visible. Alice peered at the tiny sign and managed to make out the words Rue des Trois Degres. The caption on the back was in Baillard’s spidery handwriting:

AB e GT.junh 1993, Chartres

Chartres again. Grace and Audric Baillard, it had to be. And 1982, the year her parents had died.

Putting that to one side too, Alice took out the only item left in the box, a small, old-fashioned book. The black leather was cracked and held together with a corroded brass zip and the words holy bible were embossed in gold on the front.

After several attempts, Alice managed to get it open. At first glance, it seemed like any other standard King James edition. It was only when she got three-quarters of the way through that she discovered a hole had been cut through the tissue-thin pages to create a shallow, rectangular hiding place, about four inches by three.

Inside, folded tight, were several sheets of paper, which Alice carefully opened out. A pale stone disc, the size of a one euro piece, fell out and landed in her lap. It was flat and very thin, made of stone, not metal. Surprised, she balanced it between her fingers. There were two letters engraved on it.
NS
. Compass points? Somebody’s initials? Some kind of currency?

Alice turned the disc over. Engraved on the other side was the labyrinth, identical in every respect to the markings on the underside of the ring and on the wall of the cave.

Common sense told her there would be a perfectly acceptable explanation for the coincidence, although nothing came immediately to mind. She looked with apprehension at the papers that had contained the disc. She was nervous of what she might discover, but she was too curious to leave them unopened.

You can’t stop now.

Alice began to unfold the pages. She had to stop herself sighing with relief. It was only a family tree. The first sheet was headed
ARBRE GENEALOGIQUE
. The ink was faded and hard to read in places, but certain words stood out. Most names were in black, but on the second line one name,
ALAIS PELLETIER-DU MAS
(
1193
-), was written in red ink. Alice couldn’t decipher the name next to it but, on the line below and set slightly to the right, was another name,
SAJHE DE SERVIAN,
written in green.

Beside both names was a small, delicate motif picked out in gold. Alice reached for the stone disc and laid it next to the symbol on the page, pattern side up. They were identical.

One by one, she turned the sheets over until she got to the last page. There she found an entry for Grace, her date of death added in a different colour ink. Below that and to the side were Alice’s parents.

The final entry was hers,
ALICE GRACE (1976
-) picked out in red ink. Next to it, the labyrinth symbol.